plumbing question

[gucciman]

once again the missus has overfilled the bath and ran the cylinder dry and airlocked the hot water ive tried to back fill the system by connecting a hose from the cold tap to the hot tap and also by holding my hand over a mixer tap but its not working (ths method has always worked in the past) im pumping gallons and gallons of coldwater into the hot pipework but when i turn on the hot bath tap theres still only a trickle so god knows where all the water is going. any ideas?

[bednobs]

my best idea would be to get rid of the missus, or at least ban her from taking baths

[The Builder]

Oh Gucci, my man ............. ???????
A long shot, but I've had this before - when the roofspace cistern runs out - all the accumulated cr@p in the tank migrates to the tank outlet - might have bunged it up ??

[tezestwing]

Oh what chance have we if our plumber can't sort it out?
The indirect CYLINDER should never run dry becaus it comes in bottom feed and out via the top hot draw off.
The main loft tank as The Builder has said could have a blockage but if you are not getting any hot water and the ball valve is working the only place for the extra water that you introduce must only go out via the overflow from that loft tank hth Tez

[gucciman]

im a gas engineer not a plumber, i hate plumbing, too much risk of ruining customers carpets!

sorted it eventually after countless attempts. held a plastic bag over the end of the mixer tap to create a better seal and could immediately hear the water rushing up the pipes, worked first time.

im not kidding you, i connected a hose from the bathroom sink cold tap to the hot and i pumped gallon after gallon of water into the pipework, it wasn't appearing in the header tank and when i turned the hot tap on there wasn't even a trickle, god knows where it was going !

i did fear that there was a blockage in the cold feed or the hot pipework which i wasn't looking forward to sorting out.

the old man who is vastly more experienced at plumbing than me reckons the hot water cylinder empties quicker than the header tank can re-fill it so a solution would be a larger header tank. i have also noticed that whoever installed the system has left a slight incline on the cold feed pipework to the cylinder whch can't be good, the tank coud do with raising up slightly to get a better flow.